"Where's Robin?" he growled at her instantly, fighting the urge to obtain his answer through more unsavory means.

Taking her time rising up from the earthly floor, her mocking laughter filled the air instead, stalling her immediate reply much to his visibly chagrin.

Standing at her full height, she fixed the Dark Knight a coy spiteful grin before answering simple, "Your disciple is busy tying up a loose end of mine. But don't worry, he'll be with us shortly."

"What did you do to him, Ivy?" Batman demanded through gritted teeth, his voice barely restrained.

Tossing her hair back smugly, the plant queen sneered at him, "Don't you mean what I did for him, lover?"

Fighting that urge once again, the detective chose his next words very precisely. "Pamela, you have two choices here."

"Do tell," she purred at him teasingly, her jade eyes gleaming with bemusement.

"Your first choice is to release Robin from your influence and come with me now. This is your only chance to walk out of here on your own two feet," he told her, before presenting the other option in much more harrowing terms, "If you refuse, I will burn every plant, every monstrosity in this place down to the root. And you'll be lucky if you can still walk after tonight."

Snickering through her lips, Poison Ivy gazed up at his dangerous expression with the same playful glint in her eyes as before.

Not even slightly rattled by his aggressive ultimatum, she finally raised up one dainty hand.

"I would like to propose a third option," she replied, before snapping her fingers together.

A pained grunt from Batman's right immediately captured his trained eye, followed some even louder struggling noises.

Stepping out from behind an archaic barbershop, the bewitched Boy Wonder fully came into view carrying a restrained Selina Kyle by the scruff of her neck.

Floral wrappings coiled like a snake around her torso and arms, leaving almost nothing but her bruised and battered face still visible.

Her eyes, usually vibrant with confidence and womanly swagger, glared up at him with the bleak glint of someone who had just been through hell and back.

The vigilante spent little more than a second studying Selina's restrained state, but for the redheaded vixen, it was more than enough time.

Smirking, she taunted the Dark Knight, "I believe you know Selina Kyle very well. Perhaps in more ways than one."

Despite holding his emotions behind a wall of pure stoicism, his silence was just as telling as his words.

"Selina and I had a little ...disagreement some time ago. She was a very bad kitty," Ivy mocked the forlorn feline fatale before turning back to the masked man currently seething at her.

"Fortunately, we managed to talk things out, and come to a mutually beneficial resolution. And just to show you…" Her expression shifted to one of innocence. "Robin dear, if you would."

The Boy Wonder violently yanked the brunette's face up and slid his bo staff underneath her throat.

Keeping one hand on her hair and the other brandishing the cold metal under her chin, his hooded expression conveyed nothing but obedience as he looked to the redhead for further instruction.

"All I have to do is breathe in his direction, and Robin will snap Selina's neck," Poison Ivy told him coldly, without hesitation.

"If it's any condolence, her death will be quick. But…" Her lips curled into a mischievous grin, "I'm afraid the same won't be said for your bird boy."

"What are you talking about?"

Grinning from ear to ear, she began sauntering up to the visibly seething caped crusader, one shapely leg crossing over the other as her hips swung hypnotically.

"When I made your little pet my own, I gave him something very special. Something for him to remember me by." Fearlessly walking right into his striking range, the plant queen was almost radiating with arrogance as she finally came to a stop next to his periphery.

As if disclosing a long-lost secret, she stood on her tiptoes and whispered those devilish words into his cowl, "When I kissed him, a slow-acting toxin entered his lips through mine. Once absorbed, death is inevitable. And by now, it's fully seeped in his bloodstream."

Stepping back down, she feigned the sympathetic voice of a doctor talking to her patient. "I'm afraid there is no known cure for it, Batman. The only way that poor Robin can prolong the inevitable is well..."

The plant queen licked her lips together sensually as she formed a triumphant sneer. "With the same lips who sealed his fate."

Laughing snidely at her own sadism, the redheaded woman walked over to his rear, her mere presence nearly provoking a quite volatile reaction from the detective.

As if sensing his inner thoughts, Ivy sneered over his right shoulder, "If you so much as touch me, darling, Robin and Selina both die. And then you'll be all alone here, only wishing you could join them."

"He's not involved in this, Pamela. This in between you and-" Batman started to reason with her, only for the floral witch to cut him off.

"Your precious bird boy is nothing but a meat vessel in service of Mother Nature, to serve her even at the cost of his own life," she hissed at him, a flare of anger briefly breaking through her overconfident demeanor before she continued on, "I would hate for the boy's last memories of this world to be watching helplessly as I render you a limbless, pitiful wretch of a man while he chokes on his own blood."

Taking a moment to gaze affectionately at the hooded hero, she commented, "I have so many plans for him."

"Maybe you can dream about them in Blackgate," Batman responded firmly, just barely maintaining his stoic composure.

Tossing her hair back, she let out another bemused snicker before finally twirling around on her heel to face him directly.

"I dreamed once about burying you here and leaving you to rot as I topple over your precious Gotham building by building, watching as the meat-sacks die in a hell of their own making. Tonight, darling, that dream becomes a reality." Her voice radiated sheer confidence, arrogance in its purest form.

"The only reality that's going to come to fruition tonight, Pamela, is you being strapped to a stretcher and put in a containment cell at the GCPD precinct. This is your last chance. Release them both and surrender. Neither you nor your plants will enjoy what comes next," he warned her, quietly reaching for his utility belt.

Her emerald eyes flashed at him dangerously. "My babies don't appreciate being threatened, Batman."

He nearly had the Batarang out and at the ready, but her eyes communicated just a splitsecond faster than even his veteran instinct.

A wave of vines immediately grabbed him from behind, coiling around his forearms and legs faster than he could react and sending him flailing backwards.

The Batarang instead clanged harmlessly to the ground, with its owner now violently thrown to the ground and enraptured in a floral web.

He trashed and twisted his body in every possible direction, but the vines, by sheer force of number, had wrapped around his limbs and torso so tightly that he was a writhing mummy within seconds.

Selina's eyes widened in shock.

Robin merely looked on impassively.

And for Ivy, she was all smiles.

"My children have waited a long time for this lover." Taking her time sauntering towards him, her hips swung hypnotically as she regarded his writhing and struggling form with pure satisfaction.

Forcing him up into a kneeling position, the serpentine plants had finally managed to wrestle both arms behind his back, with several smaller thorny vines serving as makeshift handcuffs against his wrists.

Stopping just inches away from the man she so despised, the redheaded vixen brought her crimson dipped fingernails to his chin and lifted his gaze to meet hers.

"And so have I," she told him simply, the previous playfulness now absent in her voice.

Remaining composed despite his restrained state, the Dark Knight stared fearlessly into the very lips that could end his life at any moment.

"Remove his belt," she instructed her floral creations, still maintaining eye contact with him.

Grunting as he felt his ribs being compressed, the detective couldn't see it, but he could certainly feel his utility belt being unhooked from around his waist and lowered to the dirt floor.

"Oh and do be careful dears. His toys were quite bothersome last time," she noted with a resentful sneer, rising to her feet as the vines finished disarming him of his gadgets, at least the visible ones.

Cocking one hip to the side expectantly, she waited as one of the monstrous plants lifted the belt up to her level.

Eyeing it with a particular disdain in her eyes, she flicked one dainty hand to the side dismissively.

"Dispose of it, my children. We don't want to give our guest any sudden advantages, now do we?" she grinned down on him.

Acting on their mother's commands, the vines hissed away with his belt, disappearing into the earthly crevices in a metallic blur.

Her hands on her hips, Ivy exuded complete confidence as she leered down on him, her longtime adversary now apparently all bark without his precious tools to give him that patented bite.

Yet despite this, Batman remained unintimidated. "You've made a mistake, Pamela. And once again, your 'pets' are going to pay for your hubris," he stated firmly, the removal of his belt seemingly not even fazing the masked man.

"My hubris, darling?" Ivy could barely contain her laughter, but Batman was far from finished.

"The second I entered Wonder City, you could've put poisonous spores in the air I breathe. You could've even converted the dirt I walked on into quicksand and pulled me underground to suffocate. But you didn't. You wanted me to walk right in, to see what you've done," he told her evenly, his eyes still glued to her.

Listening to what he had to say, Poison Ivy took a step back and turned to the bewitched Boy Wonder, who still had a death grip over Selina Kyle.

As she turned her back on him entirely, the plants all around seemed to coalesce around their mistress, as if sensing her contemplative state.

Then, after a few seconds, she answered him.

"Your words have a kernel of truth, Batman, but as always, your human naivete is so wonderfully apparent. I did not bring you here to merely show you what my children and I have accomplished. I allowed you to enter this paradise to show you…" Turning back to face him, her lips curled into a sly grin, "...just how much you've failed."

The slits on his cowl narrowed, but he said nothing as she crossed her arms against the chilling reminder of memory.

"Back at that forsaken island, that cesspool of human filth, I underestimated the power that the clown bestowed upon me. The Titan...it was an unnatural beast unlike anything I had ever dealt with before. It enhanced my biology, but it also changed me...in other ways. I became more aware of the world around me, of all the magnificent creations that had been buried underneath that hellish place. But at the same time, I became careless, arrogant-"

"More so than usual?" he taunted her in between grunts.

Ignoring his bemused interjection, she continued on, "When we fought, I became drunk off that power. I lost my way, and my children paid the ultimate price. But their pain and suffering...was because of you!"

Reacting to their creator's hateful tone, the vines adorning the Dark Knight's throatplate tightened even more, compressing his windpipe to the point he had to grunt out for air.

Her voice softened to an almost mournful yet bitter whisper as she continued on. "After you abandoned me in that greenhouse, the only thing I knew was pain. My body was broken, my mind and intelligence nearly destroyed thanks to that barbaric substance. And as I laid there, nearly buried alive in the protective shell of my own creation, I felt its heartbeat become weaker and weaker, until there was nothing. For hours, only the dying cries of my other children comforted me."

Then, her voice took on a more resentful edge. "And when Strange came to collect me, I was but a husk of my former self. Weak, helpless, vulnerable to his every poke and prod. The Titan continued to ravage my body even after the high had passed, causing me to deteriorate until I was just as pathetic and feeble as you. His men thought I would die long before I even arrived in Arkham City, so they arranged for a priest to deliver my last rites. His words meant less than nothing to me, but you see, Mother Nature was merciful to her greatest servant. I used the pollen off his coat to heal what the Titan had destroyed within me. I lived, but my children did not. And that, lover, was a fate even crueler than death."

Kneeling down in front of him, she whispered coldly at him, "For all these months, one thought in particular kept me going, even more so than killing Strange. For the man who had caused me all this pain, all this suffering, I wanted him to feel everything I did that night in the greenhouse: the pain, the helplessness, the knowing that everything and everyone you hold so dearly are going to wither and die all around you."

The detective quickly flickered his eyes towards Selina and Robin before returning his gaze back to Poison Ivy.

Needing more time, he employed the only tool he still had available in his current position: his mouth.

"If you think killing me will absolve you of your own guilt, Pamela, then do it. But let them go," he responded finally.

"I am killing you, lover. The same way you nearly killed me," she told him, holding out her palm so that a fledgling vine could twirl around her individual fingers. "By making you watch as those closest to you perish, knowing that there's nothing you can do about it."

The caped crusader held his tongue as she continued on with her scathing rant.

"For a detective as great as you supposedly are, I'm actually surprised you didn't see this coming. Did you honestly believe I had just forgotten what you did to me, what you did to us? Or, in your natural human arrogance, did you even consider that I, of all your rogues, could bring you down?"

"If it's any consolation, you're talking me to death already," he mocked her in his typical deadpan tone.

Smirking, she rose to her feet, and began walking around him in a predatory circle.

"Tell me, Batman: how soon did it take you to figure out that I merely let you take me into custody at the Cathedral? Better yet, how long until you realized that your pet kitten was missing from her leash? Though, I imagine your immediate attention was captivated by your good friend, Bane."

Though betraying no change in his masked expression, the caped crusader zeroed in on this namedrop to confirm his suspicions. "You hooked him on a new Venom strain, didn't you?"

"The poor fool was so desperate to be reunited with his precious Titan, it was almost too easy," she laughed, before elaborating, "Not long after Strange's plan went awry, I paid him a little visit in that toy factory. Truth be told, I desired his flesh for my new crop of children to feed on, but to my surprise, the meatsack offered his services to me, willingly. All in exchange for his release, and of course, his precious drug."

"I destroyed all the Titan in Arkham City," Batman reminded her, to which she merely snickered knowingly.

"Yes, you destroyed all of the Titan containers that Bane told you about," Ivy pointed out wryly, "But, some secrets he kept to himself. You can almost imagine my delight when he informed me that he had several more containers locked away deep underground, where only a man of his considerable strength could access. Of course, my babies barely even broke a stem getting to them. So, we came to an understanding."

"And when the time came, I had a little helper of mine, one of your beloved officers of the law, release him to serve as a nice little distraction for your pointy ears to zero in on while Robin was finishing my work. As an added bonus, I even enhanced his Venom supply. Something that he was very thankful for."

"The ivy venom," Batman deduced to himself, remembering the striking green veins and emerald eyes that had characterized the new appearance of his longtime rival back in the sewer system.

"Unfortunately, the meatsack possessed more brawn than brain, so his defeat was inevitable. Still, it bought enough time for Robin to collect Selina, before of course rescuing his mistress from the savages who so cruelly tried to separate her from her children. So, in the end, Bane served his purpose."

"And to what end?" he grated out at her.

"Oh, but that would be telling, lover," she chided him with a playful disapproving tone, leering bemusedly at his cowled expression, "I still let you keep some of your secrets. I think it's only fair that you allow me to indulge in mine."

Letting him stew on her ominous response, she snapped her fingers, prompting the Bow Wonder to relinquish his grip over Selina (for now at least), and walk towards her, bo staff still in hand.

Just like an obedient pet, he quickly emerged on his master's side, eyeing his kneeling mentor with an impassive yet palpable intensity.

"Selina's flesh belonged to me a long time ago, but I will confess that it was quite a happy accident that your protege decided to introduce himself to me formally earlier tonight. Given his complicity in your mass murder of my children, I was just going to let my babies gnaw on his bones, but then I thought to myself…" Her lips curled into a sly grin as she sensually traced his lower jawline, "Why waste such youthful meat, when his talents could simply be refocused to serve a much nobler goal."

Pausing to look with lustful eyes at his unflinching expression, Ivy added with a particularly lecherous smirk, "Of course, there were other perks too."

And with that, she wrapped one hand around the base of his neck before pulling him into an enchanting liplock that only further angered the Dark Knight.

Her lips colliding against his with a passionate, almost feral intensity, she purred with audible delight as he reciprocated with equal, if not greater fervor.

All the while, her emerald eyes were focused on his reaction, her gaze only breaking when Robin's hands grabbed the small of her back and pulled her even deeper into their loving embrace.

Practically reveling in their lustful display, Poison Ivy fought off her natural instincts for the moment and broke off the kiss just seconds later.

Fully facing him, she continued to taunt him, "Harley told me how you lost your other bird boy. Such a shame, really, that I never got to meet him, but your new Boy Wonder has more than proven himself to our cause. You must be so proud of him."

Still restrained by her vines, Batman felt more like a caged animal than ever before, his emotions threatening to explode from his otherwise contained and stoic grimace.

Affectionately trickling her fingers down his chestplate, Ivy had even more verbal ammunition to unload on him as she mused aloud, "I suppose it is quite fitting, isn't it? The sins of the father have now been inherited by the son. And the Boy Wonder's dedication to redeeming himself after his past crimes against nature is quite admirable, I must say."

Then, without missing a beat, Ivy instructed him with her eyes still glued to the Batman, "Now Robin, be a dear and snap Selina's neck."

"Yes mistress." Twirling around on his heel, the hooded vigilante wasted no time retracing his steps right back to the captive cat burglar.

He was nearly halfway there when Ivy suddenly called out, "One last thing, darling."

Tearing his heated glare from Selina Kyle's defiant eyes, he looked over his shoulder as Ivy addressed him without even turning around.

"Make it slow. I want to hear every bone snap," she told him with a sadistic glint in her emerald eyes.

"Yes mistress."

Again, the detective betrayed no emotion as his hooded protege neared his target.

"As you lay here, Batman, and watch as your former pupil kills Selina Kyle, you'll only just be experiencing a fraction of the misery I endured when you killed my children that night. But this is just the beginning of your penance."

As the anger in her tone rose, the pressure exerted by the vines increased even more so, compressing his torso like an almost superhuman boa constrictor.

Walking up to him, Ivy's eyes burned with a palpable fire, one only stoked after months of hate towards the masked man.

Robin roughly grabbed Selina by the hair again, preparing to wrap his forearms around her neck.

"You took everything away from me, darling. It was only fair that I take everything from you," she finished with a taunting grin, his grunts and winces more like music to her ears.

The vines were tightening to the point that he could hardly breathe, and yet, despite all that, Batman still had the wherewithal to speak to the redheaded vixen.

"For a woman as smart as you are, Pamela..." he just barely got out, looking up at her smug, sneering expression.

Then, his grimace suddenly hardened. "You talk too much."

"Right on cue, boss," Oracle reported into his earpiece.

Not even a second later, the wall to their right suddenly exploded.


Author's Note: Hey, long time no update!

So off the bat, apologies again for the long delay. I had a medical emergency last Spring that basically required that I focus on getting myself healthy again, so I had no time to work on this chapter in a timely manner as I had originally promised. Suffice to say, I'm much better now so I can get back to what I love doing best! I will do my best to get this finished by the end of this month or beginning of next, but in the meantime, I truly would appreciate any feedback (good/bad) on the ongoing storyline. I'm very interested to hear from you guys, so if you have any critiques/suggestions/whatever, please feel free to leave a comment or PM. Otherwise, be blessed and thanks so much for reading!